MODELLING A SUSTAINABLE HUMAN CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK OF SELECTED AGRO-INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS IN CAMEROON

The gap between the volume of labour hours engaged in production and the actual outputs realised from production is predominantly explained by the efficacy of human capacity. The increasing importance of human capital as a strategic competitive advantage has not only provided benchmark for profitability but constitutes a reliable premise for corporate sustainability in varied perspectives. To this effect, this study is aimed at exploring the existing human capacity development programs, the importance of human capacity development and the challenges involved in the implementation of such programs in the case of selected agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon. The study is a crosssectional qualitative research design; supported by the philosophical underpins of subjectivism ontology and interpretivism epistemology. Data are sourced using in-depth-interviews of employees purposively sampled from selected domestic agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon. The study revealed that a sustainable model for human capacity development of the selected agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon should focused on seminars and specialised training to develop technical capacity which intend shall result to increase productivity and market trends using new methods agroindustrial technology. The observed practical implication of this study relates to the modelling of sustainable human capacity development strategies with the prospect to benefit from improved outputs, amelioration of production process, and workers efficiency. In terms of value added, this study uniquely explore the phenomenon within the context of Cameroon using grounded theory analysis to develop a sustainable framework for human capacity development by exploring the nature, importance and challenges faced in capacity development implementation process.


INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is the backbone of Cameroon's economy, representing a total of about 70% of the Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P). With the fall in the prices of petroleum products, the agricultural sector is now the mainstay of the economy. The rudimentary methods used in human capacity development together with ageing workforce in majority of agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon, account for the constant decline in production thereby; affecting economic growth. The insufficient attention on the importance of human capacity development is critical to economic growth in Africa (Jaycox, 1993). Opinion holds that human resources in majority of Cameroon's agro-industrial establishment are typically rudimentary. Activities completed at different levels of the value chain such as: planting, harvesting and preservation of produce are done with little attention on workers capacity development through different capacity index such as: training and development, career development, and job enrichment. This could be linked to the high staff turnover, low production, and fall in quality of produce, excessive waste, and inefficiency in majority of Cameroon's agro-industrial establishments.
To this effect, this study is aimed at modelling a sustainable framework on human capacity development with attention on: exploring the existing human capacity development infrastructure, underscoring the importance of human capacity development and the challenges faced in human capacity development implementation. To achieve this aim, the following questions were designed: What are the existing human capacity development programs? How important are the human capacity development programs to employees? And what are the exposed limitations in the implementation of human capacity development programs in selected agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon? The significance of this study relates to the view that existing literature dwelled on human capacity development without the integration of sustainability. This study therefore bridges the gaps in scholarly literature and contributes to the advancement on theoretical development in the field of human capacity development.

LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The concept of human capacity development:
Human capacity development has been defined by different authors and institutions (Alley & Negretto, 1999;United Nations Development Program, 2009;Mbabaali, 2015). According to the (United Nations Devlopment Program, 2009), human capacity development is the process by which entities, establishments, and societies improve their capacities in order to enhance their performance. The application of the concept of capacity building encompasses every sector of life (Brown, LaFond, & Macintyre, 2001). Humana capacity development is broken into: Human capacity and capacity development. According to the (UNDG, 2017), capacity is defined as the ability of an individual, organizations or society to manage their activities effectively. However, capacity development is equally defined as the process whereby individuals or institutions develop skills with the intention to achieve development objectives. The process of capacity development is incomplete without capacity assessment (Alley & Negretto, 1999;Mbabaali, 2015;UNDG, 2017). Capacity development is part of capacity building. Capacity building is the ability to develop plans, identify and select sustainable choices, implement, monitor and assess the outcome (Ani, 1997). The notion of capacity building focuses on skill development (Brown, LaFond, & Macintyre, 2001).

Components of human capacity development:
Capacity development incorporates essential components of skills development (Jackson & Claeyé, 2011). There are four major components of capacity development: institutional development, financial resource development, human resource development and effective National Society programmer (Gibson, 2001;Brown, LaFond, & Macintyre, 2001). The strong combining factor among these elements is the objective to enhance human capital performance. Equally, (Badejo, 2015) opined that modules of capacity building include: human capital goals, clarity in direction, and system of accounting, implementation of plans and lastly, policies to attained objectives. However, (Swanson & Holton, 2001;Singh, 2012) revealed that there are three fundamental components of human capital development: personal development, career development, and organizational development. The importance of each of these components varies across different organisations. This is explained by the complexity of their operations. Human capital is critical to organisational efficiency.
To this effect, it is organisational responsibility to improve on human resources capacity ( Society for Human Resource Management, 2015). But all three components have one single focus which is individual performance improvement (Omoto, Maria, & Fredrick, 2016).
Individual development refers to the development of new knowledge, skills, and improved behaviours that would result in performance enhancement (Herman & Kurt, 2009) whereas, career development focuses on identifying individual interests, capabilities, activities, and tasks needed to develop skills for the future through job enlargement, enrichment and advancement (office of civil service, 2006). Career development programs are often design for both individuals and organisations. Individual activities comprised of: career planning, and career awareness meanwhile, organisational activities entail: mentorship, career development workshops, human resource planning, performance appraisals, and career patching programs (Badejo, 2015).
Organisational development is aimed at developing innovative solutions to performance problems by augmenting organisation's structure, culture, processes, and strategies within existing human resources structures. (Ursula & Marco, 2014), highlighted that organizations would become highly functional as a result of close working relation among these elements. The goal of organisational development is to develop organization's self-renewing capacity. This provides capacity for the organisation to introspectively discover its problems and weaknesses and reassigned resources where appropriate for improvement (Charles, Marie-Hélène, Gary, Fred, & George, 2002). As a result, the organisation will be able to confront the constant changing nature of both the internal and external organisational environmental pressures. The aforementioned is further explained by the view that human capital management recognize employees' skills, experience, knowledge, concepts, and innovative ideas as critical success factors of an organisation (Stiles & Kulvisaechana, 2018). For this reason, a company must know its employees inside and out in order to maximise their potentials. A study concluded by (Kamukama, Ahiauzu, & Ntayi, 2010) revealed that in order for companies to maximize wealth, managers must constitute the most appropriate human capital mix that would add value to the organisation. This can be done through human capital planning strategies consisting of: recruitment of top talents, career development plans, employees' mentorship, motivate and develop performance management strategies, (McMahon, 2013).

Benefits and challenges of human capacity development:
Effective capacity building process must involve: hands-on, needs-based assessment, and sustainability. It is imperious to underscore that capacity building process must be accomplished with the assurance of sustainability (USAID, 2010). Sustainability in capacity building is expected to result in positive values added to a project. Capacity implementation aimed at building skills to make permanent improvements over time. Therefore, the choice of capacity building tools must be based on the human resource needs of the organisation. This process is resource demanding (Douglas, Anastasia, Samual, & BriceKim, 2003). In recent times, there have been desperate needs to develop effective management strategies for both private and public establishments. This is in conjuncture with the view that industrialization greatly depends on efficient, dedicated, innovative and productive workforce (Salazar-XirinachsJosé & Kozul-Wright., 2014). A practical situation is opined by (Nwankwo & Mbata., 2014). In addition, the rapid change in technologies such as automated manufacturing systems has precipitated managers to maximise prospects for building sustainable relationships that will guide organisations into the future. It becomes imperative that capacity building enhances the prospect for managers to understand management techniques required to survive in this fast challenging business environment (Christian, Unathi, & Amy, 2018). According to (Yasin, 2004) every manger needs technical, human and conceptual skills set for effective service delivery.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The reality under study is human capacity development and employees sustainability of selected agroindustrial establishments in Cameroon. The phenomenon is subjectively ascertained and the source of acceptable knowledge is interpretivism epistemology (Tennis, 2008). The research approach is inductive and axiological underpin is value-bias. The research design is cross-sectional exploratory case study (Kuhn, 1970;Mugenda & Mugenda, 1999;Creswell, 2003), and the objectives are to explore human capacity development infrastructures, importance and challenges of human capacity development process in Cameroon. Data are qualitatively analysed using the grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) involving: open, axial, and selective coding processes (Wicker, 1985;Corbin, Juliet, & Strauss, 1990). The sample specifications under study constitute employees of selected agro-industrial establishments including: CDC, HEVACAM and SODOCOTON in Cameroon. According to (Rees , 1997), inclusion benchmarks relates to participant characteristics relevant for the study. The establishments selected include only public and state corporations engaged in the production of agricultural produce. A purposive sampling technique was used to select Thirty (30) participants representing six (6) focus groups drawn from three (3)  Data collection was thoroughly effected (Bruns & Grove , 2005) via face-to-face in-depth interviews. According to (Polit & Hungler , 1995) research instruments used for scientific analysis must be tested as valid measurement for the study. Expert validity of interview questions and pilot study were completed. Findings were checked for both internal and external validity.

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
Objective 1: To explore existing human capacity development programs in selected agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon.    Memo: Based on the aforementioned analysis, the emerging theme is Seminars and Specialised Trainings that dominates human capacity development programs in agro-industrial establishments in Cameroon. This analysis is demonstrated in the structural model below.

Source: Field Data (2019)
Objective II: Exploring the importance of human capacity development programs to employees.

Source: Field Data (2019)
Memo: Based on the interviews two main categories emerged: Poor Organisation of Process and Lack of Financial Resources. Theoretical saturation was achieved.